Re: when to defrag?

From: johnf (john_f_at_bigREMOVEpond.net.au)
Date: 12/30/04 

Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 21:15:43 +1100

A good addition to my reply.
I agree totally & reckon the combines replies cover the query completely. 

--
johnf
> kline wrote:
>> How long should I leave it before defragging my hard drive under XP
>> Home SP2?
>
> Depends on your usage. A volume that rarely experiences change does not
> need to be defragged very often, if at all.
>
> Personally I like to check fragmentation after doing heavy system
> maintenance, like adding or removing large applications, or installing
> major updates. If I then see a lot of red, I defrag. If not, I don't.
>
>> I had thought that it should be done about once a month or
>> so, but when I open the Disk Defragmenter program and run "analyse"
>> it says that a defrag is not necessary.
>
> Then it probably is not necessary.
>
>> It must be about three months or so since I last defragged.  The only
>> slow down in performance I've noticed lately is that clearing the IE6
>> History takes longer that it used to...
>
> This sounds like normal behaviour on a system that has all user files
> on the system volume, is frequently used for web surfing, and does not
> get a lot of programs installed and/or removed to/from the system
> volume.
> If you are very concerned about the time to clear IE history (why?)
> defrag. If not, don't.
>
>> I'm wary of just defragmenting for the sake of it as I've also read
>> that doing this too often can have an adverse affect on stability -
>> can any one confirm this?
>
> Well, a defrag does a pretty rough deassembly and reassembly of your
> file system. It usually is not a problem, but _if_ something goes wrong
> during the defrag process (this can be anything from a power outage to
> a bug in the defrag software) you better start praying that you do not
> lose anything vital. The chance of something like this actually
> happening is slim, and it never happened once to me, but it is
> possible. And the more often you defrag, the higher the risk you have
> of eventually running into problems.
> Second there is the issue of physical strain on your hard drives. If a
> large file is fragmented your read/write heads will have to do a lot of
> work to actually read it. So if you access this file often it is
> logical that defragmenting it once will reduce overall workload on your
> disk, since the file now can be accessed in a single clean sweep.
> However, if a file is not likely to be accessed there is no such gain,
> and thus a defrag will only be a waste of work and time, and will in
> itself cause unnecessary work on your hard drive. So frequent defrags
> just for the sake of having a neat recycle bin and IE cache will
> probably reduce the overall lifetime of your hard drive, not to mention
> be a waste of your precious time.

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